Georges Maurice de Guérin du Cayla (August 4, 1810 – July 19, 1839) was a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

.

Descended from a noble and rich family, he was born at the chateau of Le Cayla in Andillac

Andillac

Andillac is a commune of the Tarn department in southern France....

, Tarn. He was educated for the church at a religious seminary at Toulouse

Toulouse

Toulouse is a city in the Haute-Garonne department in southwestern FranceIt lies on the banks of the River Garonne, 590 km away from Paris and half-way between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea...

, and then at the Collège Stanislas, Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, after which he entered the society at La Chesnaye in Brittany

Brittany

Brittany is a cultural and administrative region in the north-west of France. Previously a kingdom and then a duchy, Brittany was united to the Kingdom of France in 1532 as a province. Brittany has also been referred to as Less, Lesser or Little Britain...

, founded by Lamennais

Hughes Felicité Robert de Lamennais

Hugues-Félicité Robert de Lamennais , was a French priest, and philosophical and political writer.-Youth:Félicité de Lamennais was born at Saint-Malo on June 19, 1782, the son of a wealthy merchant...

. It was with continuing doubts that, under the influence of Lamennais, he joined the new religious order in the autumn of 1832; and when, in September of the next year, Lamennais, who had come under the displeasure of Rome

Holy See

The Holy See is the episcopal jurisdiction of the Catholic Church in Rome, in which its Bishop is commonly known as the Pope. It is the preeminent episcopal see of the Catholic Church, forming the central government of the Church. As such, diplomatically, and in other spheres the Holy See acts and...

, severed his connection with the society, Maurice de Guérin soon followed his example.

Early in the following year he went to Paris, where he was for a short time a teacher at the Collège Stanislas. In November 1838 he married a Creole

Creole peoples

The term Creole and its cognates in other languages — such as crioulo, criollo, créole, kriolu, criol, kreyol, kreol, kriulo, kriol, krio, etc. — have been applied to people in different countries and epochs, with rather different meanings...

 lady of some fortune; but a few months afterwards he died of consumption

Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...

. In the Revue des deux mondes

Revue des deux mondes

The Revue des deux Mondes is a French language monthly literary and cultural affairs magazine that has been published in Paris since 1829....

for May 15, 1840, a memorial of Maurice de Guérin by George Sand

George Sand

Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, later Baroness Dudevant , best known by her pseudonym George Sand , was a French novelist and memoirist.-Life:...

 was published, to which she added two fragments of his writings--one a composition in prose entitled "The Centaur", and the other a short poem. His Reliquiae (2 vols., 1861), including the "Centaur", his journal, a number of his letters and several poems, was edited by G.S. Trébutien, and accompanied with a biographical and critical notice by Sainte-Beuve

Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve

Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve was a literary critic and one of the major figures of French literary history.-Early years:...

; a new edition, with the title Journal, lettres et poèmes, followed in 1862; and an English translation of it was published at New York in 1867. His sister Eugénie

Eugénie de Guérin

Eugénie de Guérin , French writer, was the sister of the poet Maurice de Guérin.Her Journals and her Lettres indicated the possession of gifts of as rare an order as those of her brother, though of a somewhat different kind...

 was a great influence on him and published some of his works after his death.

Though he was essentially a poet, his prose

Prose

Prose is the most typical form of written language, applying ordinary grammatical structure and natural flow of speech rather than rhythmic structure...

is more striking and original than his poetry. Its peculiar and unique charm arises from his strong and absorbing passion for nature, a passion whose intensity reached almost to adoration and worship, but in which the pagan was more prominent than the moral element. According to Sainte-Beuve, "no French poet or painter has rendered so well the feeling for nature--the feeling not so much for details as for the ensemble and the divine universality, the feeling for the origin of things and the sovereign principle of life."